


when we all fall asleep, where do we go?

by azumarheart



Series: The Aftermath [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, billy lives!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 12:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21118691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azumarheart/pseuds/azumarheart
Summary: Billy wakes up in the abandoned factory with a violent gasp.His head is pounding hard: worse than any hangover he’s ever had. His fingers scratch at the concrete floor below him. He rolls over and vomits.He remembers everything.aka the fix-it where Billy lives





	when we all fall asleep, where do we go?

**Author's Note:**

> Uh yeah so my heart hurts too much for Billy and after writing my last fic with him? Devastated. I had to make a fix-it. 
> 
> Don't worry- I have another sad fic about Billy coming >:) because I'm evil and like to make myself and you guys sad lol
> 
> Title from "bury a friend" by Billie Eilish. All her songs are just perfect for Billy lol
> 
> Comments are always greatly appreciated :)

Billy wakes up in the abandoned factory with a violent gasp. His head is pounding hard: worse than any hangover he’s ever had. His fingers scratch at the concrete floor below him. He rolls over and vomits.   
  
When he’s done, he props himself up, and feels the weariness in his muscles. Looking down, a beam of light shines from the ceiling and onto the ground in front of him. He looks at his own vomit. It’s not black sludge.  
  
Billy blinks a few times, before shooting up into a fuller sitting position. He gasps desperately a few times before reaching down to feel his bare chest. The skin is unbroken.   
  
Unbroken.   
  
There’s nothing that marks the area where the tentacle arm of the monster had shot right through him.   
  
He remembers.  
  
He remembers everything.  
  
He remembers the pool, the sauna, the car crashing. Hitting Maxine, taking the brown eyed girl.   
  
Seeing his mother in his memories.   
  
Standing up to the monster.  
  
Being torn apart.  
  
Maxine sobbing above him.  
  
Dying.  
  
Billy retches again, off to the side. He’s broken out into a cold sweat. He doesn’t understand how he’s alive. How is he alive?  
  
After a few moments, Billy raises himself from the ground. He looks around at the warehouse. There’s no one else there.  
  
Why was he awake, in this place? Was his body never really there? Everything had been so vivid; he had to have been there. Maybe the monster had taken over most of his body? Created a replica? Connected his real conscious with a fake body?  
  
He doesn’t have answers. He wants answers.  
  
He wants to find Maxine.  
  
He looks down again at the spot he’d been laying in. And it gave him more of a clue as to what had happened. There was dust settled around, lining the shape of his body. His body must have been there a while.   
  
But he knows what happened was real. He knows it.   
  
He considers his last theory as correct for the time being. And he takes his first steps towards the exit and towards the outside.  
  
It’s dawn when he walks outside of the building. He breathes in the damp air desperately, feeling alive and connected and in control. Nothing residual lurking through his system. Clear-headed.   
  
He doesn’t know where to go, not really. Billy doesn’t want to face his father right now. He couldn’t.   
  
Billy thinks and thinks as he starts walking down the road. To the sheriff maybe? No, he’d just be taken home. Steve Harrington? Billy’s pretty sure Steve would just slam the door in his face. The Wheelers? Absolutely not. Whatever weird thing had gone on between himself and Mrs. Wheeler was lost to the past. It made him nauseous to think about now.  
  
But he remembers the Wheeler boy, Mike, from the mall. He was protecting the brown eyed girl.  
  
The brown eyed girl could help him.   
  
He considers where the kids would be. He’d never seen the brown eyed girl before, but she stuck close to Mike and Maxine. It’s likely they’d all be together after everything that happened.   
  
That was it. The Byers’ house. Isolated, always weird, and the hub for whatever strange shit happened in this town. Billy is reminded of last year when he beat Steve’s face in inside that house. The way the kids had protected each other. Maxine finally gaining a backbone.  
  
His head is lost as he continues on his walk. He’s slightly unsteady on his feet, but they keep moving anyways.   
  
The Byers family lived on the outskirts of town, which was convenient. The abandoned warehouse wasn’t too far away.   
  
When he starts down the long driveway of the Byers’ house, his heart begins to pound. The residual fear lingering in his chest springs up.  
  
Would the kids believe it was really him? They had seen him essentially die right? Would they think he was still a part of the monster? Would they try to kill him too?  
  
But he’s Billy Hargrove. And he doesn’t show fear.   
  
He’d had that trait beaten out of him.  
  
He staggers past the cars parked in front of the house. Judging by the amount, it was likely that all the kids were here. Possibly Harrington too.  
  
Standing on the front porch, he doesn’t know whether to knock or barge in. Knocking felt too normal for this situation. Barging in felt like an attack, and might put everyone on defense.   
  
He decides to knock twice, then open the door.   
  
Surprisingly, everyone is awake, even though the sun has barely broken through the tree line. Which means that everyone’s heads snap to the door as soon as Billy steps in.  
  
The kids are huddled into a blanket pile on the floor, on top of some mattresses. Ms. Byers is curled into an armchair. Jonathan Byers is sharing another with Nancy Wheeler. Steve is sprawled on the sofa with some random girl Billy hadn’t seen before.   
  
Everyone’s faces go pale.  
  
Max stands up slowly, a hopefully yet pained desperation on her face. Her face and eyes are puffy, likely from crying.   
  
“B-Billy?” she asks, voice cracking and weak. She moves to step towards him, but a hand holds her back.   
  
“Wait, Max. It might still be the Mind Flayer. We don’t know that it’s him. And we saw him... die...” Mike says nervously, but with resolution in his tone. His words raise everybody’s hackles, and Billy can tell they are suddenly on the defense. He swallows heavily, unable to find words.  
  
A voice peeps up before anyone else moves.  
  
“It’s... he’s not. He’s not a threat. There’s no traces of the Mind Flayer on him. I can’t sense it at all,” says a nervous looking boy sitting near Ms. Byers. Judging by the matching haircut with Jonathan, it was most likely Will Byers.   
  
Billy doesn’t fully understand what Will means, but it seems to calm everyone down, so he is thankful. It seems to be a catalyst for Maxine as well.   
  
She bolts in front of him, and slams into his body. Her arms wrap around his shoulders. Maxine clutches onto him, fingers pawing desperately at his back, as she begins to cry again.   
  
“I thought you were dead! I watched you die. You’re alive, oh my god you’re alive. How? I’m... god I’m so happy you’re alive,” she whispers. The words strike Billy in the chest, and he is unable to push back his own tears. The pain of what he went through weighs far too heavily on his shoulders, but Maxine is breaking down his walls. He can’t help himself from grasping back at her, and letting his weak knees go limp. They drop to the floor, still holding on, as they both cry.   
  
Tears stream down his cheeks, as he presses his face into the familiar red hair of his little sister. Her hands rub soft circles on his upper back. The feeling is so familiar, and so reminiscent of how his mother used to comfort him. He cries even harder.   
  
Eventually their tears slow, and they pull away gently. Maxine grips onto his hand, and doesn’t let go. He doesn’t try to pull away.   
  
“How are you alive?” Steve asks from the sofa. It draws Billy back to the present, and back to the dozen of eyes staring at him. Billy can’t even begin to feel embarrassed. He had been through too much to care about these people seeing him cry.  
  
“I-I don’t know. I can’t... I can’t make total sense of it. I know everything that happened to me was real. I was there. I did the bad things the monster told me to. I had no control. I remember everything. I was there...” he trails off for a moment.   
  
“I died. I remember dying. I felt it. But then I woke up in the abandoned warehouse. Where it first got me. And it looked like I had been lying there for a while. I’m alive.”  
  
Billy pauses again to let the information sink in, before continuing.  
  
“If-if I had to guess, I think maybe... it made a fake body, like a replica of mine. And it connected my mind to it. Because I was there and experienced it. But I can tell this is me. I’m unharmed and alive. Somehow.”   
  
The room is silent once again as everyone processes.   
  
“How’d you know where to find us?” Lucas Sinclair asks.   
  
“I...I just woke up in the factory minutes ago, realized I was alive, and went to the first place I could think of. I figured Maxine would be here.”  
  
Billy’s explanations seem to satisfy the group. It continues to be quiet, until a girl shuffles towards Maxine and Billy.  
  
The brown eyed girl.   
  
He looks at her. Her eyes are red and puffy too, like she’s been crying. He wonders what for.   
  
“Y-you. You broke through the monster in my head. You helped me remember myself. I wouldn’t have broken out if not for you,” Billy says breathlessly.   
  
She scoots closer, until she’s beside Maxine.  
  
“Your happy memory. The beach. I’m glad I helped you find it again,” the girl says, smiling softly at him.   
  
“What are you talking about El?” Maxine asks. So her name was El then, or at least a nickname.   
  
El looks at Billy, seemingly for permission, and sees the openness in his eyes.   
  
“I saw his memories. Lots of bad ones. Bad papa,” she starts. Billy watches Maxine gulp heavily at the mention of Neil.  
  
“The Mind Flayer was using them. Helped make Billy angry. Easier to control. But I found it. Happy memory. His mama. On the beach.”  
  
El turns to look at him with another kind smile.  
  
“She was beautiful. Billy was happy.”  
  
Billy bites his lip to keep himself from crying again. He nods at El, and her smile grows.   
  
“I... I saw my mom. And I broke out of the monster’s control. And I knew I had to do something to save you. And Maxine. I was terrified but... I had to protect you,” Billy whispers, replaying the moment in his mind.   
  
El reaches out to grab his other hand. Maxine grips the one she is holding tighter.   
  
“You saved us. You’re good Billy. Your Mama would be... proud,” El says.  
  
It breaks Billy further than he can handle. And he begins to cry again. But the two girls hold him tight, and he feels the unspoken support from the others in the room.  
  
He doesn’t know what will happen after this. If the monster is really gone, or what it was, or what really happened to him. He doesn’t know if Neil is going to kill him for being gone for so long, or where he will go if that happens. He doesn’t know if he’ll be okay in the long run, dealing with the memories and pain the past week has brought him.   
  
But in this moment, alive and breathing, with two young girls and a room full of friends, Billy feels like he might be okay.   
  
Like he might be happy again one day.

**Author's Note:**

> It's 3am and I'm on a creative streak and I just wanna keep writing more and posting! Also I'm hungry! 
> 
> I connected this to my "The Aftermath" series, but know that this is a stand alone fic within it! I may post more in that series that follow the canon that Billy died.


End file.
